


Living with Otters

by DarkHorseAsh



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Astraphobia, Episode: s08e06 The Caretaker, F/M, Fights, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Nightmares, Otters, Romantic Angst, doctor who 8x06, living with otters, this really isn't as angsty as Im acting like it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 11:58:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13612908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkHorseAsh/pseuds/DarkHorseAsh
Summary: " I lived among otters once for a month. Well, I sulked. River and I, we had this big fight" ... ever since i heard this line in 8x06, I wanted to see a fanfic of this and since this is me, it had to include SOME kind of angst.  It really is not as bad as the tags make it look, but I liked the idea of it being 11 and River not 12 and River because I think 11 would be much different than 12 would in this situation.





	Living with Otters

The doctor wasn’t sure what he had done to end up here. He and River had been having a lovely few days, visiting places that River had always been pestering him to see and finishing with a lovely picnic on a little beach that didn’t even end in chaos. As he’d started back to the prison, straightening his bowtie with his free hand, he had even remarked “you know, I think this is the longest we’ve ever gone without running into the world ending!” River had given him that grin that would always get him grinning like a hyena. 

He had left for a few weeks, most recently due to having had to save a little planet not far from Mars from some weird ice aliens that were trying to destroy its lava core for...some reason that he still didn’t entirely understand. He was limping around the consol nursing burns to his right arm from when he’d gotten too close to the lava. All he wanted was to go get River and, if he was being entirely honest, curl up next to her for a few hours of peaceful sleep. The longer he spent alone the fiercer his nightmares got, and for the last few days he’d woken up howling like a scared child only minutes after he went to sleep.

It was immediately obvious that she was mad at him. River stormed into the TARDIS, sending him a glare that made the tired man shake in his shoes as she walked up and poked him hard in the chest. “Will you NEVER learn to land at the propper times?” He blinked, wildly unsure of what she was talking about as she glared viciously. “Last time you dropped me off TWO WEEKS late you bastard.” She snarled viciously, stalking around the consol and setting it to random before taking off. He didn’t protest, still watching her unsure of what he to say. “River…” He began, but River cut him off. “I’m in prison you...you can’t cause me to vanish for two weeks!” 

The doctor gave a sharp, angry noise, fury rising in his chest and overwhelming any good sense and calmness that he would usually cling to in this sort of circumstance. “Well excuse me. If you hadn’t insisted on sending us all over the damn universe, maybe I would have managed to get you home on time!” She stalked forward, shoving him angrily backward. The doctor only just managed not to cry out as her hand struck his burns, grimacing as she fell back into the wall. Spinning, he stalked out into the bogland. He didn’t even realize what was happening behind him until he heard the TARDIS dematerializing.

“RIVER!” He wasn’t sure why he was still shouting, it was clear she had absolutely no plans to return. Pain and loss shook his already not wildly well controlled frame, sending him stumbling as he sank down onto the hard soil by the riverbed and just put his head in his hands, shivering slightly. “Nothing could make this worse.” He grumbled, just before the sky opened and rain began to pour down, soaking the exhausted timelord to the core. 

The doctor crept down the riverbank, grimacing as his clothes clung to his aching body. A furry shape flew into his leg, causing his eyes to jerk down to look at it. It was an otter, brown-furred and big eyed, chittering eagerly when he saw it. “Hello there.” The doctor muttered, raising his eyebrows as it took off down the riverbank. He followed close behind, stumbling awkwardly through the mud.

It took three days before he even saw the otter again, after it had vanished only minutes after he first saw it. He was curled up on some grass, shirt off to show the inflamed burns down his arm and free hand looped around his waist to prop himself up. The little animal was sitting on a rock next to him when he woke up, chittering happily. The Doctor sighed as he shifted out a hand to pet the creature, pulling himself up slowly as he moved down to sit with his legs in the water. A moment later, there were more furry heads popping up. 

He spent the next week naming each otter after an old companion. Rose had red tufts of fur around her ears and bright, playful eyes. Alistair had grey fur down his face and a habit of breaking up fights between the younger ones. River was the last one he named, with curly fur that actually was weirdly similar to his hair. She was the one most likely to nip at his toes, but she was also the one who would be sitting on his hand when he woke up screaming, nibbling on his forearm till he woke up. One of the older females, Martha, would often bring him raw fish, but even after a week he wasn’t hungry enough to do it.

It took two weeks for him to be hungry enough. Martha bounced up and down in delight, making that funny little otter noise that he insisted would drive him crazy, but did sound quite nice when it was all of them going at once. The fish was disgusting, but his hungry body forced it down. He was lucky that time lords lasted longer than humans on no food, but he had still lost a fair bit of weight, and the otters had been looking concerned. 

That actually was the least concerning part of his existence, he decided as he scratched a new day into the tree. He was pretty sure it was at 22, but since the planet did not really seem to get dark, he wasn’t entirely sure. The biggest issue was his arm. For the first two weeks it had been healing fine, or so he had thought. But now, it was swelling and more painful than it had been in days. 

It was raining once again days over. River and Alistair had tugged him into their den, which was, by some miracle, large enough for him to fit. He curled up at the back, smiling softly as the otters curled up around him. “Thanks, guys.” he mumbled, resting one hand on River’s back as he actually managed to sleep for what felt like the first time in months.

It had been four weeks when Alistair limped into the den howling in pain. The poor little thing had injured its leg, and spent the rest of the day cuddled up next to him as the doctor carefully splinted his little leg. The creature was remarkably trusting, even if Donna eyed him suspiciously the whole time. 

Alistair was back up and running the next day, much to the Doctor’s amusement. He was still limping, but his fuzzy little body moved with ease over everything the others could. “Tough little bugger.” He murmured affectionately. He’d long since given up on looking good, dressed in just his undershirt and his very damaged pants and shoes. His shoulder didn’t really fit in his shirt all that well anymore, pressing up against the cloth in a way that felt like it was melting.

In the end, it was the thunderstorm that did him in. It was somewhere around his 34th day, well, night really. He was sitting with his back against a tree half asleep, the closest he seemed to get to the real thing, when the cracks of thunder and lightning filled the air. The sounds jerked him away from nightmares of Gallifrey burning, bombs falling and children screaming. He threw himself awake, blinking and gasping.

He was blinking at the rain, confusion plastered across his face just as the thunder sounded again. The man howled, curling in on himself with a desperate, frantic noise. “No no no no no.” He mumbled, crying out in fear as the thunder continued to sound overhead, far too close to the bombs for him to hear the difference. “Please.” he mumbled, closing his eyes against the sights of his people falling around him. “Please.” 

The thunder didn’t stop, hours of desperate flashes of gold and screams dying in the back of his ears as he pressed himself into the ground. The thunder was almost non-stop, too loud for the man to hear the otter’s frantic squeals. He wept like he hadn’t since the days after the war, fingers tangled in his hair as he sobbed in gallifreyan, begging them to stop dying around him over and over until his throat was all but too dry for him to speak anymore.

When he stirred again, it was to see the sun shining down on him and worried otter faces in his field of vision. “Hey, guys.” The doctor rasped, bringing one hand up to awkwardly pet River and Donna. “It’s ok.” he shifted slightly, managing a weak laugh when he discovered Jack and Rose curled up in his lap and Alistair laying on his legs, rubbing his face along his little splint. 

Martha, who he was pretty sure was some kind of matriarch of the little group of otters, was even more insistant than usual about getting him to eat something. He was too hungry to manage to avoid it, forcing down as much of the raw fish as he could before curling back up in a ball. Martha licked his ears, actually managing to get a laugh out of the old timelord. “Thanks, old girl.” He breathed. 

It was thirty eight days when he finally realized she wasn’t coming back. He curled around himself, letting Alistair huddle into him and buried his head in his arms. He wished he hadn’t named them what he had; it just made him miss them. It just left him lost and exhausted and afraid and all he could think of when he looked at them was all of the people he had let down. “I’m so sorry.” he whispered, one hand tangled in Donna’s fur and the other in River’s. He whimpered softly. “I’m so sorry.” 

He wasn’t sure he’d ever had nightmares as bad as that night. He was back on the TARDIS with River and she was talking and then he was on the ice planet and the fire was burning her and he was screaming as he watched her die in front of his eyes again and again. He was in the library, pulling as hard as he could against the handcuff as he begged her to stop. He was on Trenzalore, her standing in front of him to take a cyberman’s bullet. She was dying for him a thousand times as he desperately begged her to stop until the tears running down his face were mixed with her blood.

Even little River biting his fingertips didn’t wake him. She whined despondently as he cried, as she had grown to like this odd, furless otter. A jingling sort of noise drew her attention, sending her bolting back to the water. Alistair the otter didn’t move, cuddling his little body into his lap. The sound didn’t wake the doctor, who wasn’t thrashing in misery only because of the fuzzy body resting on him. “Please.” He whimpered. 

River really had not intended to leave him there for that long, but the TARDIS had been being angry at her for leaving at all. She’d spent the month in her cell, longer than she had ever spent there without getting out, and she was getting worried about her husband when the TARDIS showed up empty. 

“Doctor?” She called, hurrying out of the TARDIS. A small shape latched onto her foot and she yelped, looking down to see an otter attached. “What?” She yelped, blinking at the creature as it started tugging her. She stumbled after it, awkwardly falling to her knees in the thick mud. She blinked ahead of her, finally understanding only when she saw a shape she knew well. “Doctor.” She breathed, scrambling to put her hand on his shoulder, knowing too well what was wrong when she felt how hard he was shaking from the rain.

Once again hating herself for not trying harder to get the TARDIS to not be mad at her, she locked her arms around his shoulder and dragged him the few feet to the TARDIS. She ignored the two fuzzy balls of fur that had shot in before she closed the door, to put all her attention on the man she loved instead.

He woke in the middle of a moment where she was throwing herself between a dalek and himself, leaving him howling her name even as he woke. “River!” He screamed, somewhat confused by the hard surface that wasn’t stone underneath him, the warmth of the person who he was leaning against. “River.” He sobbed again, not realizing where he was for a moment until he forced his eyes open and saw the TARDIS. “River.” He whimpered in misery.

River’s heart broke as her husband cried her name, soft and desperate and afraid. “Shh.” River murmured, holding him close despite the fact he was significantly taller, crooning gently to the still-crying man. “Shh, sweetie, I’m here, it’s ok. I’m here now. I’m alive, I promise.” 

The Doctor shifted weakly, even though it took him a moment to recognize the curly hair he was looking at. “River.” he breathed, this time with something more like amazement. He wrapped an arm around her, clinging to her as he shook and cried. “You’re not dead.” He whimpered into her shoulder. “You’re alive. You’re alive.” 

River lost track of how long they sat there. At some point, the otters had moved from bouncing around the TARDIS to curling up near his legs. River wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing there, but she didn’t have the heart to throw them out. The Doctor had calmed now, his violent shaking down to just quiet whimpers as he shifted to look at her. “You’re alive.” He repeated, looking so grateful that if she hadn’t already felt incredibly responsible and guilty, she would have at that point as she nodded. 

“Yup. I’m here. And I...I’m sorry.” She whispered. “I’m sorry for not fighting harder with the TARDIS to get her to stop being mad at me. And I’m sorry I got so mad to begin with. You didn’t mean to get me in trouble at the prison.” The doctor nodded, taking a moment before he spoke. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry at you, either. I enjoyed everywhere we went and it was rude of me to imply otherwise in any capacity.”

They fell asleep like that, leaning against the console of the TARDIS with those two little otters curled up on their laps and the approving hum of their home/river’s second mother/the doctor’s best friend. Alistair and River chattered happily, both thinking that even if this place smelled weird, that they might not want to leave any time soon. Leaning into their best friend, both River and the Doctor slept well for the first time in what felt like a very, very long time.


End file.
